


Needles

by meanoldauthor



Series: Mean Old Lady [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 02:36:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4122751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A younger courier, in a simpler time, making stupider decisions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Needles

Adal squinted at the Jet inhaler, trying to make out details in the moonlight. It had tasted funny. She pried at the inhaler with a nail, wondering if it had been tampered with. She started to giggle, the high starting to get to her. “Oh noooo,” she moaned between fits. “What will I doooo—eheh. Heh.” She started to skip down the trail, pack bouncing against her back. So her Jet was spiked, big deal. No one out to screw with her, in the middle of nowhere and making an all-night run.

She started to hum to herself. She’d make it to Needles by dawn and get her package signed off on, and have caps in her pocket to do as she pleased with.

Adal giggled again. Package signed off on. The fella in charge of the courier station, Clint, had a package she wouldn’t mind signing on…

The stars were leaving trails in her eyes as she stared at them, and stopped skipping as her balance grew treacherous. She blinked and rubbed at them, tears running down her face. God, when had they gotten so bright? She shuffled up the next hill, watching her feet. That inhaler had been spiked to hell and back, all right, Jet alone never did this to her. She glanced up when she neared the top of the hill, and dropped flat, air driven out of her with a ungainly grunt.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, biting it to keep from laughing—she had sounded like a strained brahmin, and the stranger on the far hill had certainly heard her. Adal wormed her way onto the hill’s crest, shushing herself softly. He hadn’t moved, standing there, facing away. Her vision swam too much for details.

Adal rolled onto her back, muttering. “It’s a…the…” The way her tongue moved in her mouth distracted her. “Nng. Aahhh…” she tried to touch it to her nose as she thought. “Aaaghhh…Izzaa…” She clapped her hands. “Bonewood!” That was the tribe around here, the ones who had taken a shot at her a couple months gone. She rubbed her leg, feeling a scar through the hole in her pants. Bastards. She rolled over again, barely stopping herself before she tumbled down the hill entirely. She grinned wolfishly, remembering limping off as they laughed at her. Now she had the drop on one of the eggsuckers.

“I gooot youuuu…” She tried to pull the hatchet off of her belt, but her fingers were thick and stupid. “Gah. C’mon. Damn it.” She pinned it between both of her hands and worked it free, just for it to go tumbling off. “Fuck! Gebbback, you—” She slithered after it, kicking up dust and scraping her hands and knees on rocks. She pounced on it, getting her fingers around the haft and attempting to strangle it. “Ha! You—fuck. Traitor.” She spat out a mouthful of dirt and stuck her other thumb in her mouth, tasting blood. “Now. We got chopping to do, you and me.”

After a couple tries, Adal got her feet under her and crept up the hill. She bared her teeth. Sucker must have been deaf as a post, because there he stood, waiting. She raised the hatchet high and charged.

 _”Yaaa—_ uh—oh, fuu—” She stumbled on a rock, and she hopped on one foot a moment before the other found the ground. Head down, she closed the gap with her foe. “Take _that!_ —Agh!”

He was wearing thick armor, burning with the same cold fire that smeared off the stars. It bit into her hands as she flailed at him, hatchet lost and screaming murder, the pain making her angrier. “Fucker! Huh? Say something!” He stood there, solid, swaying gently under the blows but not making a sound and enraging her more. She threw her weight into the blows, trying to knock him over. “Eggsucker! Cocksucker!” When her hands were bloody and raw, she kicked out at him instead, the fire tearing through her boots. “You! Bonewood! Bastard!”

He wasn’t fighting back. He was just _taking_ it, not even feeling her blows. It dawned on her just how tall he was, towering over her. Shit, oh, shit, he was tough, and he was gonna get mad, and he was going to start hitting her back with that burning armor and she was _fucked_. She stomped hard on his shins, and he lurched towards her, looming and huge.

“Ah! Ah! _Aaahh!_ ” She reeled sideways and staggered vaguely northward, picking up speed as she ran and not daring to look back. If that freak caught her, she's be torn apart.

“Fuck this! Fuck this!” she screamed, all the way to Needles.

—

Clint whistled to himself as he unlocked the door, looking forward to the day. The sun was just up and…

Someone was sitting on his front porch. They were dusty and disheveled, and he heard them taking little sobbing breaths as they sat. He waited a long moment before clearing his throat. “Uh…ma’am?”

He recoiled as she turned. Her black hair had come loose, sticking to the tears and snot on her face, eyes staring and bloodshot. She was covered in a thick layer of dust and spattered with blood all over. “Uhhh…are you…?”

Her chin quivered. “I—you—package—” She burst into tears. “There’s a man—Bonewood—and I—and a fire—and my Jet was bad—” She threw her head back and howled. “An’ I think I _killed_ him but I can’t _rememberrr!_ ” She raised her hands to the heavens, covered in blood and encrusted with cactus needles.

—  
Across the Presidential Suite’s dining room table, Arcade was giving her an incredulous look, drink forgotten. Raul was chuckling behind his hand. Cass had her head down, shoulders shaking, beating the table weakly with a fist. 

Adal tipped the bottle almost vertical before setting it down. “So he gets me cleaned up, and I’m embarrassed as fuck when my head starts to clear. He’s a gennleman about it, walks me out there to find my hatchet, and sure enough, I was high as a kite an killed the shit out of a cactus.” She chuckled at herself, cracking open a fresh beer. “That was back in, uh…’68. Last fucking time I ever did Jet.”


End file.
